Editors mine for your draft’s theme, for your paper’s thesis, your poetry collection’s soul. We chisel around what’s there, and show you what we can see. Then, we begin the process of sloughing off the slag in favor of economic rock. It’s messy. It’s worth it.

Make the map as you go, and be smart about it. A novel is a mountain. It will allow to you find certain ways in, and other times it will shut you down.

The image is an original map of a highly productive silver mine in Leadville, Colorado, 1860-1910. This mine was an unusually complex network of shafts and tunnels named for the legendary Irish hero Robert Emmet. The ‘Emmet’ was operated and maintained by miners and pump engineers with mainly Irish roots, alongside Cornish, Finnish, and Mexican miners, and miners from the American South and Midwest.

Underground, their shift was 10 hours for 3$. Above ground, they organized to form a union.

The archival records of their community became the basis for my novel ‘The Sleepers,’ Regal House Publishing, 9/1/26.

Photo credit: author’s photo of the John Campion Papers and Blueprints. Rare and Distinctive Collections: Western Federation of Union Miners. Norlin Library, University of Colorado Boulder.